


All my words are breaking through

by wobblyheadeddollcaper



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, brief mention of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 04:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3514949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha doesn't want to start a garden. Post-winter soldier fic about Natasha exploring her new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All my words are breaking through

Natasha walks down the street.

As she hands over the Winter Soldier file to Steve she feels a snap, the release of tension in a string too long stretched. It is, like all the world about her, an illusion. She has ties to so many people now, an embarrassing wealth of ties. She can count her friends like gold through her hands, run them through her mind like silk thread through her fingers. The thing she is free of is obligation - no, more precisely than that, she is free of tasks, of orders.

She need call no-one to report her status, since everyone saw her trial-cum-press conference, or will soon have seen it.

She has nothing she needs to do.

Her pleasures (listed in her file, all over the internet) are concrete, tactile, ephemeral. The taste of green tea, the sparkle of gemstones, music. Nothing you need to own. Nothing that requires context. Perhaps she should cultivate new interests, grow them like a garden. Invest time in something.

Not gardening.

A pet, perhaps? No.

Negatives are a start, she tells herself firmly. Negatives are a good place to begin.

*

A day later she has grown utterly sick of sitting in her apartment, trying to summon up a desire. She recognises the problem – the paralysis of choice. She needs a limit. She must do something by, say, 1300 hours tomorrow.

*

There's a pottery class three blocks away. She fights away the instinctive refusal – it may be stupid, but it's a start.

It doesn't come easily. She focuses hard on it at first, presses at the wrong place and twists the vase to a ribbon. Then she thinks of weapons training, tries to reach that mindless communion of though and body that is second nature. She feels that blank adrenaline descend, moves her hands and the vase bulges and flattens, squashed.

“Natasha, right?” The woman next to her has a squat but serviceable pot spinning. “That clay is taking a beating.”

“It's not something I've tried before.” She flashes a smile at the woman like a passcard – rueful, inviting. She has only ever used it before when pretending to fail for strategic purposes.

“You need a bit more of the slick, I reckon.” Natasha dips her fingers in the watery clay and tries again.

“What's your name?”

“Becca. Trying to make a present for my wife, but three lessons in I'm not sure I wouldn't be better off buying something from the farmer's market.”

“I'm sure she'd love whatever you gave her, if you'd made it.”

“Yeah, probably. That's why it has to be good, though.” Natasha nods. She likes that idea, files it away. There is a silence.

Natasha recognizes that this is her window to talk about herself.

“I came here on impulse,” she says. “I wanted something new.”

“Bad times?”

“Interesting times. Good outcomes, but a lot of blame flying around.”

Becca looks sideways at her. “That thing at the Triskelion, right?”

“Yeah.” Natasha lets her put two and two together. Becca's pot crumples on the wheel.

“No fucking way.”

“Yeah.” Natasha doesn't look sideways, then figures, well, what of it? She doesn't need this woman's good opinion for anything.

Becca looks impressed.

“Hell of a thing you did there.”

“Yeah.” Natasha smiles and squishes her clay into a round lump, ready to start again.

 

*

She wakes up with a feeling like hunger. Some small, buried, animal part of her is fighting its way through layers of lacquer and poise. She wants to talk to someone.

Dangerous, is her reflex thought, but is it? What more could she tell?

She runs her friends through her mind, fingers slipping over the threads. Not Steve, he’s busy. What does she even want to talk about? Not Clint, not Tony.

Banner, her mind supplies. Or no, she doesn’t want to talk to him, but she wants someone who can centre themselves as he does. Someone calm, so she doesn’t have to be oil on their water. Someone who won’t want to talk shop.

“If you don’t have it, go and find it,” she tells herself. “If you can’t go, then build where you are.”

She goes out of her front door, heads north. 

Thirteen blocks away there is a park next to a pet store, and she wanders in to look at the tropical fish. The counter attendant is a girl, maybe seventeen, teeth in braces, old cutting scars peeking out under her buttoned shirt.

“Can I help you with anything?”

“Yes, actually,” Natasha says, supressing the just browsing response that trips so quickly to her tongue. “Can you tell me about these fish?”

A fish tank is not a garden, after all. It could very easily be moved around, or left somewhere safe.

“These are zebrafish,” the girl says. “They’re okay in warm rooms. They breed really quick. The fancy one there is an angler, he needs a water warmer in winter. Excuse me.” 

The girl turns towards the counter, picks up her buzzing phone. 

“Yeah? Oh, hi Miss Jacobs, yes, it’s Amanda, is there a problem with Marty? Uh huh. I’m real sorry about that, is there any – well how quick should I come? I’ll need to find cover for my shift, is – okay, I’ll be there in forty minutes tops, that’s quick as I can. Real sorry, ma’am.”

The girl – Natasha would bet quite a lot that Mandy is her name-of-use – hangs up with a vicious stab of her finger at the keypad. “Bitch, bitch, bitch – oh, I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“I’ve heard the word before,” Natasha says, a little laughter leaking into her voice. “Are you okay?”

“My kid just got sick at daycare, I gotta pick him up. If you want the fish I’ll have someone here soon as I can to-“

“Another day without an aquarium won’t hurt me. Can I help you?” A kid with a kid. Some people get their responsibilities young. It seems to have tempered Mandy, for all her teenage trappings.

“I – that would be real kind of you ma’am, but-“

“I have literally nothing to do today, Mandy. Helping rescue your kid from daycare would be doing me a favour.” Mandy looks her over and nods, and Natasha is a little proud at being trusted.

“Do you have a car?”

Natasha thinks it over. “I can have one here in ten minutes if traffic’s good.”

“In a car I can get there and back while this place closes for lunch. I’ll give you gas money-“

“On it.” Natasha flips open her phone, finds the number for the car service she uses in town. “This is Chornaya Krassny account 30772184. I want a four-door with a – hold,” she turns to Mandy, who is feeding the caged birds with quick, deft hands. “How old is Marty?” 

“Nearly two.”

“-with a car seat for a two year old child. My location, fast as possible, please.” She hangs up.  
“On their way.”

“Are you famous or something?” Mandy looks at her with big eyes.

“Natasha Romanov,” she says, giving a little half wave. “I keep the car on retainer for business.”

“Must be useful,” Mandy says wistfully. “I’m Mandy Pickering, real pleasure to meet you.”

“So where are you going to leave Marty?”

“Hoo boy, there’s a question. I’ll phone Selena, see if she can cover for me. I’m raising Marty kinda by myself right now.”

Natasha can’t help the little twitch of her brows.

“Yeah, it looks bad,” Mandy says, a little stung but still polite, “but this is just an off day.”

Natasha nods understandingly. “Many people don’t handle bad news this well. You're competent, you just... deserve more help.”

Her phone chirps.

“Car’s here.”

The driver hands the keys to Natasha and departs with all the incuriosity that she pays for. The service is pricy but blessedly, crucially fast, a speed that has on some occasions saved Natasha's skin.

On the drive to the daycare Mandy phones Selene, who it turns out can’t cover her shift.

“I could take your shift,” Natasha says impulsively.

“Uh.”

“Write me a list, give me a contact number. You can drive, right? Drop me back at the store, you go home with Marty.”

“I could get very fired for this.”

“Okay it with your boss. Eccentric rich lady wants to run the store for an afternoon.” Natasha considers, then decides to sweeten the deal. “I can probably get some paparazzi in, give him some free advertising.”

“Uh…”

“I’m also called Black Widow,” Natasha admits.

“Oh shit, that’s why you’re familiar! Look, I can’t repay you, but – please, yes.”

“Go on then, call your boss.”

“You’re an honest-to-god hero right now, thank you.” Mandy says fervently, and Natasha smiles a little all afternoon, while she sells fish food and chew-toys to bemused journalists.

*

“Natasha Romanov to see Margaret Carter. Thank you.”

Margaret Carter is old, thin-skinned, and Natasha remembers the dark gaze of the woman in Steve’s file and feels a sense of the yawning distance of time.

“I have a message for you, former director Carter. From Steve. Steve Rogers.”

“Peggy will do, young lady. All the nurses in here call me Peggy anyway. It’s rather like second childhood, going back to one’s Christian name.”

“Peggy, then. I’m Natasha, formerly of SHIELD. Steve said to tell you he loves you, and that his tree is budding but no fruit yet.”

“Steve never had the least notion of discreet communication. You really should train him.”

“Not my line of work anymore.” Natasha says lightly.

“Oh, it’s always lying in wait- the skills of the past can always be polished up. It’s why they have a couple of strong young male nurses here, in case I get a little too lost in my mind.”

“You used to hit people?” Natasha can't reconcile this genteel old woman with the demands of SHIELD wetwork

“I was an excellent fighter. The flesh is very weak, but the body remembers better than the brain, old habits kick in and suddenly you’re braining an orderly with a bedpan. Watch out for that, if you’re retiring – or is it just a rest cure?”

“Something like that. I’m taking some time to decide what to do next.”

“Good girl. Don’t let them lure you back in before you want to go. There’s usually someone around who’ll step in for you.”

“No one as good as me,” Natasha says slyly. Peggy laughs.

“Experience is how they learn. Show them once, let them fall flat a few times… the joys of command. And sometimes you find a gem.” She nods slowly. “Black Widow. I remember now. Nick was very proud of you.”

“I’m flattered you remember.”

“Don’t take that tone. If you want to be remembered for something else… you have the chance now.”

Natasha sits with her in silence a few minutes more, absorbing this, before getting up.

“I’ll tell Steve you’re well.”

“How is Steve?” Peggy says, her voice trembling.

“He’s well. Steve said to tell you he loves you, and that his tree is budding but no fruit yet.”

“So indiscreet, that man. Goodbye, young lady.”

*

Natasha sits on her bed, legs crossed, and thinks about how she wants to be remembered. She doesn’t have a plan yet, but she is, perhaps, ready to start the garden of the rest of her life.


End file.
